Going To Hell For Laughing, Part Sixty Four

Prepare to have your mind blown. I will never forget the first time I slapped this on my turntable. I had wracked my brain trying to guess what the hell the Big A and the Big M were, and why they equaled each other. I won't spoil it for you, just listen to the song. Me? I literally fell on the floor about 30 seconds into this beauty.

The artist is Gary S. Paxton, who at one point was in a band called The Pledges with future Byrd and Flying Burrito Brother of the Purple Sage, Skip Battin. (They later performed as a duo with awful monikers like Chuck and the Chuckles, Clyde Gary and his Orchestra, Gary and Clyde, and Flip and Skip!) After those zany halcyon days ended, he was one the of the Hollywood Argyles, singing their hit paean to a comic strip neanderthal, "Alley Oop." He also did some producing and engineering for artists like The Association, and even studio vocal work for Ernest Tubbs, Charley Pride, and Waylon Jennings. Perhaps most importantly, he ran a few record labels, the pharmaceutically named Garpax Records (where he conspired with Boris Pickett to make "Monster Mash" a graveyard smash) and a tiny but important country label called Bakersfield International.

At some point in the early seventies, he found God. Or maybe he was already religious and was hit in the eye by a laser at a Blue Oyster Cult concert, pushing him totally over the edge. It was around this time that he started a new label, called simply Pax, and started putting out records like these. Thank God. Though this is most assuredly a Christian record, he manages to tip us off that he's a Republican as well. I still can't believe this is on red vinyl, and I also can't believe that in 1978, of all years, this born-again huckster didn't notice that the logo on the sleeve looks like little Space Invader naughty bits. Sadly, the phone number below them does not ring through to Gary Paxton, or to God, unless He lives in Kansas City, Kansas and goes by Bob.

Tony

This entry was posted
on Thursday, July 21, 2005 at 6:53 PM.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.

I heard this song once when I was a little kid, I think it was my father who was listening to it...

Needless to say that song started me down the path to becoming an aethist.

SomethingAwful.com just did a flash video of this song, as of this posting the video should still be on the right menu under "Flash Tub: The Big 'A' = The Big 'M'" and while it's not as hilarious as the other Flash files on the site I thought it was okay.

I never actually thought about whether Gary had kids or not, but since I first posted this, I have picked up the full length album, and also I haven't had any abortions. You kids sounded sweet though, and don't take anything I wrote too seriously. That's entertainment.

I was a college sophomore in 1978. One night, stoned out of my mind, I came across the always hilarious Jim and Tammy Fay Bakker busily defrauding viewers of their christian TV show, the PTL Club. They aired an anti-abortion segment that a member of their production crew had put together. It consisted of a slide show of aborted fetuses, with a running foreground image of one of those heart monitor blip lines....and the soundtrack was THIS music!!! When the piece ended, the Bakkers came back on screen looking green around the gills. They recovered quickly and resumed raising money for their Heritage USA christian theme park, while I began a thirty-year odyssey to locate the music I had heard that night. And here it is at last!!! Thank you Record Robot, thank you.